Kostas Bakoyannis is a fellow at the Hertie School in Berlin and the President of the Commission for the Environment, Climate Change, and Energy (ENVE) at the European Committee of the Regions. He also works as a strategic consultant and leads the opposition in the city of Athens.
He served as Mayor of Athens from 2019 to 2023. Previously, he served as Governor of Central Greece from 2014 to 2019 and as Mayor of Karpenissi, from 2011 to 2014.
Born in 1978 in Athens, he graduated from Millfield School (1996, UK), before attending Brown University (2000, USA) to study History and International Relations. He continued with postgraduate studies in Public Policy, with a specialization in Macroeconomics, at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government (2004, USA). He holds a D.Phil. in Political Science and International Relations, from the University of Oxford (2019, UK) and was a resident fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School Institute of Politics (2024, US).
Bakoyannis has worked at the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs and as executive manager in the private sector in Athens. He has also held positions in the European Parliament in Brussels and the World Bank in Kosovo.
He is a member of the European Committee of the Regions. He is also a council member of the European Council on Foreign Relations and a Greek Leadership Council member of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN). In 2022, he was declared “Grand Officier de l'Ordre de la Couronne” by the King Philippe of Belgium.
He has served in Greek Special Forces as a Paratrooper.
He speaks English and German.
